Outreach

Even the best project cannot succeed if people don’t know about it! People need to know about your program, understand it, and see how it is relevant for them. Take the time to come up with a compelling story that describes your program and then thoughtfully plan how to share that story.

How can I effectively draw people to my program?

Infopeople offers a four-week course called How to Market Your Library: A Toolkit of Proven Techniques. In that course, instructor Ned Potter introduces the CAPE framework for marketing (Context, Aims, Promotion, and Evaluation): The CAPE Marketing Campaign Framework.

Using social media to tell the story of your project is important. Which social media tool(s) make the most sense to use for your project? In the Infopeople course Content Marketing: Beyond the Random Post, an overview of the various tools and and the niches they can help you reach is shared: Planning Social Media Strategy.

Decided to use Twitter? Here are some tips from How to Market Your Library, A Toolkit of Proven Techniques: Tweeting for the Library.

Being thoughtful about social media is important, but good old-fashioned face-to-face interactions are still key, too! In the Infopeople course Build a Buzz for Your Library: Word-of-Mouth Marketing, a template for an 8 step plan is shared: 8 Step Word of Mouth Marketing Plan.

Also take a look at Winnetka Northfield Library’s sample plan and their sample message sheet, too.

Alert the media! A press release announcing upcoming programming and projects can attract coverage from local news sources. ALA’s “Tips for Writing Press Releases.”

Webinars

Visual Merchandising for Public Libraries: Practical Strategies for Applying Bookstore Insights to Library Collections. An Infopeople archived webinar presented by Alison Fiscus (May 2018). This webinar aims to supply librarians with the knowledge, tools, and plans necessary to merchandise their own libraries.

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